Notes:
Takes me around 2:30 for heg
3 for nasa
2:30 for satellites
1ac Heg advantage
Space race is inevitable, the US is the only nation uninvolved
Pomeroy 3/4/12 (Ross Pomeroy is the weekend editor of RealClearScience and contributor to the Newton
Blog. “Will China Trigger Another Space Race?”
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2012/03/04/will_china_trigger_another_space_race_106263.html
, Donnie)
Neil deGrasse Tyson is "certain" that the next space race will be initiated by China. "If China sets up a
permanent base on the moon, and tries to explore Mars on a time scale shorter than ours, that will be another
space race," Tyson told Popular Science earlier this week. If Tyson is right, then a new space race is
inevitable . In the past decade, China has made no effort to hide its intentions in outer space. The country
wants to lead the world in space exploration, and it has shown that it has the potential to do so. Many Chinese
see their space program as a matter of national prestige -- a confirmation of their new found superpower
status. This view has been a fierce motivator. After first announcing its manned spaceflight program in 1999,
China sent astronaut Yang Liwei into space only four years later. And just last year, millions of Chinese looked
on with pride as the Tiangong 1 space station, their "Heavenly Palace," blasted off into the night sky to enter
orbit around our planet. But these accomplishments are mere stepping stones to a loftier goal, which, after
being ignored ten years ago, is now coming into renewed focus. Little heed was paid to Ouyang Ziyuan, a chief
scientist with China's Moon exploration program, when he said in 2002 that China's "long-term goal is to set
up a base on the Moon and mine its riches for the benefit of humanity." How quickly times can change. Russia,
Japan, India and the European Space Agency are all currently floating around ideas for a lunar colony within
the next 20 years. The only superpower that doesn't seem to be talking about it is the United States (except for
Newt Gingrich). Indeed, the next space race may be about to begin, and thus far, America has been
notably absent from the starting line. This needs to be rectified. America needs to rev its engine of
innovation and take its position at the forefront.
China is going to cislunar space now, if they win it will undercut the free market and US
leadership
Spudis 12 (Paul D. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
He was Deputy Leader of the Science Team for the Department of Defense Clementine mission to the Moon in
1994 and is the Principal Investigator of an imaging radar experiment on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission,
launched to the Moon in October, 2008. In 2004, he was a member of the President’s Commission on the
Implementation of U. S. Space Exploration Policy and was presented with the NASA Distinguished Public
Service Medal for that work. He is the recipient of the 2006 Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics, awarded
by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific
papers and four books, including The Once and Future Moon, and (with Ben Bussey) The Clementine Atlas of
the Moon. “China’s Long March to the Moon” http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/page/2/, Donnie)
Controversy quickly followed astonishment with the recent release of a white paper outlining China’s
intentions in space. Sparking particular buzz from the Internet was a statement about human lunar missions
being an objective for future Chinese space efforts. That statement drew comment ranging from sophisticated
to simplistic, yet in my opinion, most of the discussion to date neglects the essential point of what this means to
humanity’s future in space. The report lays out China’s plan for missions to the Moon of increasing complexity
and capability. The Chinese orbiters Chang’E 1 (2007) and Chang’E 2 (2010) made global maps of the Moon’s
morphology and topography. The Chang’E spacecraft demonstrated China’s ability to navigate trans-LEO
space. After Chang’E 1’s mapping mission was complete, the spacecraft was deliberately de-orbited to impact
the Moon. However, after surveying a potential landing site for future missions, the Chang’E 2 spacecraft left
lunar orbit and was sent to the Earth-Sun L2 point, a stable location 1.5 million km from the Earth. This
maneuver is quite complex and its successful completion demonstrated their capability to maneuver spacecraft
throughout cislunar space. It also lays the groundwork for more complex lunar and planetary missions in the
near future. The white paper reiterates the Chinese strategy of orbiter-lander-sample return for lunar
exploration with robotic missions, of which the Chang’E series is the first step. The paper mentions human
spaceflight activities occurring only in low Earth orbit, specifically asserting their determination to conduct an
“independent” space exploration program. Closing remarks in that section of the report have been drawing the
most attention: China intends to conduct “studies on a preliminary plan for a human lunar landing.” In NASA
terms, such wording would lead no one to conclude that anything remotely flight-ready was within a decade or
two of occurring. But our way is not their way. The Chinese clearly are systematically pursuing a series of steps
to incrementally increase their flight experience, technology base and operational expertise in low Earth orbit,
but in a direction unmistakably toward the Moon and throughout cislunar space. Despite some
pronouncements of military doom – visions of Red Army Space Troopers descending upon us – a war in space
does not appear imminent. Over several pages, the report repeatedly proclaims China’s intention to “peaceably
explore and use outer space,” especially in conjunction with an endless series of United Nations mandates,
innumerable Moon treaties and international kumbayah. Perhaps, as Queen Gertrude once observed, they doth
protest too much. Military action is not the only possible geopolitical threat on Earth or in space. Although it is
probably too early to tell, the real issue is how serious is China about expanding their sphere of operations
beyond low Earth orbit to the Moon. Currently, their human space program appears to be relatively benign,
with simple Earth orbital missions, the construction of a rudimentary space station, crew EVA – all steps and
capabilities that a nascent space faring nation must learn and develop. Their proposed robotic lunar
exploration plan likewise makes sense, in that they first orbit and map, then survey in detail to land, rove,
explore and return samples. For each step, a new capability is developed, building on existing ones, with all
contributing toward a future strategic position. Hmmmm – an incremental architecture with cumulative series
of small but interlocking steps. What a concept! The reaction of space observers in the West seems bifurcated
along the lines of “The sky is falling!” or “Who cares?” For the former, some note that the Chinese space
program is run by their military. Moreover, the demonstration test of a Chinese anti-satellite weapon in 2007
did not engender the international peaceful good feelings so stridently expressed in the white paper. Those who
read potential danger in Chinese intentions in space are not being unreasonable, even if there appears to be no
immediate threat. For the latter group, nothing that China has done, is doing or ever could do in space would
bother them. ASAT testing? Any alarm is labeled “hysteria.” Chinese lunar landings? So what? We did that 40
years ago. These people know not what they don’t know. Holding such a position is patently naïve. The real
cause for concern is not a Chinese presence in cislunar space or on the Moon, but our absence from it. Although
much has been made of China’s purported movement toward capitalism in recent decades, they still possess an
authoritarian political system, one with scant regard for the rule of contract law, copyright, private property
and western notions of free market dynamics. Although some may not care whether China conquers the Moon,
if they are the only ones on the Moon, they will determine what operational regime and legal template will
prevail there. Advocates of “commercial space” might do well to carefully consider such a scenario –
commercial companies are incorporated under national auspices on Earth, pay taxes to terrestrial
governments, and are subject to the laws of the country in which they are based. They will not be free
agents either in space or on the Moon. I argued almost two years ago that there is a new “space race” but
that it is quite different in character from the first one. The outcome of this race will determine what kind of
politico-economic paradigm will prevail on the new frontier of space. One can imagine a situation in which a
country establishes a permanent presence on the Moon and maintains control of the resources there. Yes, the
Moon is a big planet, but the valuable concentrations of water lie in small areas near the poles. Water at the
poles of the Moon allow a space faring entity to develop routine access to the entirety of cislunar space, where
all of the economic, scientific and security space assets of many countries reside. Space control in the new
century does not refer to “Death Stars” bristling with space weaponry, but to situational awareness, assurance
of service, and the defense and maintenance of space-based assets. Control of cislunar space – meaning in this
case the ability to routinely travel throughout its extent and to all the various orbits of cislunar satellites – does
not mean to militarize or weaponize space, but rather the permanent presence of a space faring power of a
particular ideology or worldview, undeterred by the absence of a competing ideology. And if some say “So
what?” to that, the more fool they.
Winning the race is key to both hard and soft power
Spudis 10 (“The New Space Race” http://onorbit.com/node/1954, Donnie)
A new space race The race to the Moon of the 1960's was an exercise in "soft power" projection. We raced the
Soviets to the Moon to demonstrate the superiority of our technology, not only to them, but also to the
uncommitted and watching world. The landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 was by any reckoning a huge win for
United States and the success of Apollo gave us technical credibility for the Cold War endgame. Fifteen years
after the moon landing, President Reagan advocated the development of a missile defense shield, the so-called
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Although disparaged by many in the West as unattainable, this program was
taken very seriously by the Soviets. I believe that this was largely because the United States had already
succeeded in accomplishing a very difficult technical task (the lunar landing) that the Soviet Union had not
accomplished. Thus, the Soviets saw SDI as not only possible, but likely and its advent would render their
entire nuclear strategic capability useless in an instant. In this interpretation, the Apollo program achieved not
only its literal objective of landing a man on the Moon (propaganda, soft power) but also its more abstract
objective of intimidating our Soviet adversary (technical surprise, hard power). Thus, Apollo played a key
role in the end of the Cold War, one far in excess of what many scholars believe. Similarly, our two follow-on
programs of Shuttle and Station, although fraught with technical issues and deficiencies as tools of exploration,
had significant success in pointing the way towards a new paradigm for space. That new path involves getting
people and machines to satellite assets in space for construction, servicing, extension and repair. Through the
experience of ISS construction, we now know it is possible to assemble very large systems in space from smaller
pieces, and we know how to approach such a problem. Mastery of these skills suggests that the construction of
new, large distributed systems for communications, surveillance, and other tasks is possible. These new space
systems would be much more capable and enabling than existing ones. Warfare in space is not as depicted in
science-fiction movies, with flying saucers blasting lasers at speeding spaceships. The real threat from active
space warfare is denial of assets and access. Communications satellites are silenced, reconnaissance satellites
are blinded, and GPS constellations made inoperative. This completely disrupts command and control and
forces reliance on terrestrially based systems. Force projection and coordination becomes more difficult,
cumbersome and slower. Recently, China tested an ASAT weapon in space, indicating that they fully
understand the military benefits of hard space power. But they also have an interest in the Moon, probably for
"soft power" projection ("Flags-and-Footprints") at some level. Sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit is a
statement of their technical equality with the United States, as among space faring nations, only we have done
this in the past. So it is likely that the Chinese see a manned lunar mission as a propaganda coup. However, we
cannot rule out the possibility that they also understand the Moon's strategic value, as described above. They
tend to take a long view, spanning decades, not the short-term view that America favors. Thus, although their
initial plans for human lunar missions do not feature resource utilization, they know the technical literature as
well as we do and know that such use is possible and enabling. They are also aware of the value of the Moon as
a "backdoor" to approach other levels of cislunar space, as the rescue of the Hughes communications satellite
demonstrated. The struggle for soft power projection in space has not ended. If space resource extraction and
commerce is possible, a significant question emerges - What societal paradigm shall prevail in this new
economy? Many New Space advocates assume that free markets and capitalism is the obvious organizing
principle of space commerce, but others might not agree. For example, to China, a government-corporatist
oligarchy, the benefits of a pluralistic, free market system are not obvious. Moreover, respect for contract law, a
fundamental reason why Western capitalism is successful while its implementation in the developing world has
had mixed results, does not exist in China. So what shall the organizing principle of society be in the new
commerce of space resources: rule of law or authoritarian oligarchy? An American win in this new race for
space does not guarantee that free markets will prevail, but an American loss could ensure that free markets
would never emerge on this new frontier. Why are we going to the Moon? In one of his early speeches
defending the Apollo program, President John F. Kennedy laid out the reasons that America had to go the
Moon. Among the many ideas that he articulated, one stood out. He said, "whatever men shall undertake, free
men must fully share." This was a classic expression of American exceptionalism, that idea that we must
explore new frontiers not to establish an empire, but to ensure that our political and economic system prevails,
a system that has created the most freedom and the largest amount of new wealth in the hands of the greatest
number of people in the history of the world. This is a statement of both soft and hard power projection; by
leading the world into space, we guarantee that space does not become the private domain of powers who view
humanity as cogs in their ideological machine, rather than as individuals to be valued and protected. The
Vision was created to extend human reach beyond its current limit of low Earth orbit. It made the Moon the
first destination because it has the material and energy resources needed to create a true space faring system.
Recent data from the Moon show that it is even richer in resource potential than we had thought; both
abundant water and near-permanent sunlight is available at selected areas near the poles. We go to the Moon
to learn how to extract and use those resources to create a space transportation system that can routinely
access all of cislunar space with both machines and people. Such a system is the logical next step in both space
security and commerce. This goal for NASA makes the agency relevant to important national interests. A return
to the Moon for resource utilization contributes to national security and economic interests as well as scientific
ones. There is indeed a new space race. It is just as important and vital to our country's future as the original
one, if not as widely perceived and appreciated. It consists of a struggle with both hard and soft power. The
hard power aspect is to confront the ability of other nations to deny us access to our vital satellite assets of
cislunar space. The soft power aspect is a question: how shall society be organized in space? Both issues are
equally important and both are addressed by lunar return. Will space be a sanctuary for science and PR stunts
or will it be a true frontier with scientists and pilots, but also miners, technicians, entrepreneurs and settlers?
The decisions made now will decide the fate of space for generations. The choice is clear; we
cannot afford to relinquish our foothold in space and abandon the Vision for Space Exploration.
And science leadership is key to hegemony and soft power
Coletta, 09 – Duke University , Ph.D. in Political Science, December 1999 Harvard University , Master in
Public Policy, 1993 Stanford University, Master in Electrical Engineering, 1989 Stanford University , B.S.E.E.,
1988 [September 2009, Damon Coletta, “Science, Technology, and the Quest for International Influence,”
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA536133&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf]
To discover sustainable hegemony in an increasingly multipolar world, American policy makers will need more
than the Kaysen list of advantages from basic science. Dr. Carl Kaysen served President John Kennedy as deputy national security adviser and over his long career held
distinguished professorships in Political Economy at Harvard and MIT. During the 1960s, Kaysen laid out a framework with four important reasons why a great power,
the United States in particular, should take a strategic interest in the basic sciences. 1. Scientific discoveries provided the
input for applied research, which in turn produced technologies crucial for wielding economic and military
power. 2. Scientific activity educated a cadre of operators for leadership in industries relevant to government
such as health care and defense. 3. Science proficiency generated the raw elements for mounting focused,
applied efforts such as the Manhattan Project during World War II to build the first atomic bomb. 4. Scientific progress built a
basic research reserve that when necessary could move quickly to shore up national needs .1 These arguments
underscored science‘s contribution to new products and services that provided market or military advantages .
The pursuit of physics, chemistry, and biology at the frontiers of knowledge could have direct effects on
national excellence. The following sections of this article extend Kaysen‘s list for the present multi-polar world. The United States’ largest
military and economic shares in such a world do not guarantee empire. Soft power from scientific achievement,
however, may make up part of the deficit, enough to augment America‘s reputation and American
leadership in the international order. The U.S. science establishment is then described and evaluated for
its capacity to integrate and leverage the complete list of science benefits: Kaysen‘s nation-based items plus the civilization-based
advantages exposited here. Case studies of the Office of Naval Research and U.S. scientific outreach to Brazil illustrate underlying strengths and
weaknesses of the U.S. system for maintaining the lead in basic science. Among the weaknesses, democratic regimes tend to suffocate
professions, particularly in the sciences, due to natural hostility between democracy and technocracy. The United States might yet find the right balance by inculcating a
politically sophisticated professionalism. In
other areas of heavy government responsibility—finance, health care, foreign intelligence, and
and the public have over time placed considerable trust in expert agents. With greater scientific
literacy at the mass level and greater political literacy at the scientific level, America‘s state and society may
forge a somewhat freer, healthier relationship with American science, accruing benefits for U.S. material power
in the long run and, in the short run, for persuasive influence in the international system. Science and International
defense—officials
Leadership In their book on Leading Sectors and World Powers (1996), George Modelski and William Thompson extended their analysis of innovation back, beyond the birth
of industrial capitalism, to the Sung Dynasty in China at the turn of the First Millennium. 2 Modelski and Thompson mentioned inventions like the compass that helped
leaders extract wealth from maritime East-West trade routes, but they also noted the Sung rulers’ cultivation of knowledge and the influence of Chinese intellectuals on
administrative reform. A scientific society has the opportunity to apply methods and models toward political and economic questions. Just before the November 2008
elections, the New York Times’ David Ignatius sat down with two former national security advisers, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, for a series of interviews on
foreign policy. 3 In their discussion of complementary strengths that could lay the groundwork for greater transatlantic cooperation, the advisers noted how impressive it was
that the European Union could knit together so many independent states with sophisticated, comprehensive rules and regulations without inadvertently strangling economic
growth. It
seems improbable that Europe could build the administrative structures for a successful common
currency or a single labor market without an ethos that came from scientific competence. Progress in the
physical sciences can spill over in a way that supports modern institutions and efficient public policy. Spillover
to social sciences reinforces the notion that scientific progress and scientific literacy are civilizing influences. As
such they can fortify what Joseph Nye termed a country‘s soft power, its capacity to establish appealing precedents for the
rest of the world. 4 Science shares properties with Olympic sport in that it can open avenues for non-coercive
cultural hegemony . Foreign emulation in science, though, counts for more than soccer or gymnastics. The demonstration
effect in physics may initially appear as man-overcoming-Nature rather than man-versus man, but great scientific advance is more cumulative than
victory in the Games. Anyone seeking to take the next step must accommodate the vernacular of the pioneer
and accept his tutelage in the universal logic governing scientific concepts . Moreover, the ingenuity and skills on display as a citizen
in a specific nation-state, albeit working at university, unlocks another secret of nature register around the world as excellence that could someday be harnessed by
government and adapted to the state-versus-state context. That fungibility garners international respect and piques interest in greater collaboration. In his study of American
science overtures to Europe during the first decades of the Cold War, John Krige
related how overlapping interests and in some instances
the overlapping community of scientists and government officials infused pure science aid with foreign policy
purpose. The construction of CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) for all-European particle research in
Geneva. European conferences of the well-connected Ford Foundation and the development of the NATO Science Committee did not simply advance basic knowledge;
they also nurtured a special dialogue, unencumbered by normal diplomatic preoccupations. This privileged communication nevertheless
facilitated American hegemony and buttressed Western solidarity against intimidation, or alternate offers,
from the Soviet Union. In material balance of power terms, the larger economy and more capable nuclear forces of the
United States were seen as less threatening to Western Europe than the Red Army, deployed just over the
makeshift border with East Germany. 5 Cultural appeal, including scientific prowess as well as liberal
democratic ideals, afforded the United States extra diplomatic margin as it simultaneously expanded its own
arsenal and its alliances against a technically inferior opponent. Finally, during the late-Cold War, after 1970, the economic rise of
Germany and Japan, the larger diplomatic role of China, and the greater international participation from post-colonial governments in the developing world reshaped the
global agenda. Problems
traditionally managed by the great powers— arms control, arms proliferation, international
development, environmental consequences of industrialization and urbanization—were picked up by nongovernmental entities who sought to influence state behavior. Given their small budgets and their status as
outside observers rather than diplomats or official negotiators, specialized knowledge was their instrument of
choice. As transportation and communication technologies improved through the 1980s and 1990s, issue-based groups and public policy institutes
proliferated, combining with academic researchers to build epistemic communities.
It ensures cooperative frameworks
Friedman, 11 – recently stepped down after 30 years as Executive Director of The Planetary Society. He continues as Director of the Society's
LightSail Program and remains involved in space programs and policy. Before co-founding the Society with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, Lou was a
Navigation and Mission Analysis Engineer and Manager of Advanced Projects at JPL. [Feb 14, 2011, Lou Friedman, The Space Review, “American
leadership,” http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1778/1 //STRONG]
“American Leadership” is a phrase we hear bandied about a lot in political circles in the U nited States, as well as
in
many space policy discussions. It has many different meanings, most derived from cultural or political biases, some of them contradictory.
The term sometimes arouses antipathy from non-Americans and from advocates of international cooperation.
They may find it synonymous with American hubris or hegemony. It is true that American leadership can be
used as a nationalistic call to advance American interests at the expense of non-American interests. But more
often it may be used as an international call for promoting mutual interests and cooperation. That is
certainly true in space, as demonstrated by the International Space Station, Cassini-Huygens, the James Webb Space Telescope, the
Europa Jupiter System Mission, Mars 2016/2018 and Earth observing satellites. These are great existing and proposed missions,
which engage much of the world and advance the interests of the US and other nations, inspire the public, and
promote cooperation among technical and scientific communities worldwide. Yet space exploration and development are
often overlooked in foreign relations and geopolitical strategies. Sometimes, the connection between space exploration and foreign relations has even
been belittled in the space community. I refer to the NASA administrator’s foray into the Middle East last year, promoting science, math, and technology
as a way to reach out to Muslim nations. It is true that he used some unfortunate wording, such as “foremost purpose,” but it was great that the
administration wanted the space program to be part of its overarching international efforts to engaging the Muslim community in peaceful pursuits.
Apollo and the International Space Station were both accomplishments motivated more by international and
geopolitical interests than they were by space enthusiasm. It’s my view that space ventures should be used to
advance American engagement in the world. (For example, with China on the space station and Russia in Mars Sample
Return.) American leadership in space is much more desired that resented—except when it gets used unilaterally, as in the past
Administration’s call for “dominance in cislunar space.” Asian countries (China, Japan, India) are especially interested in lunar
landings; Western countries, including the US, much less so. However, cooperating with Asian countries in lunar
science and utilization would be both a sign of American leadership and of practical benefit to US national
interests. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has been a leader advocating such cooperation. At the same time American leadership can
be extended by leading spacefaring nations into the solar system with robotic and human
expeditions to other worlds. The US can’t do everything alone. Climate monitoring, Earth observation, space weather prediction, and
ultimately asteroid deflection are huge and vital global undertakings that require international participation. That is also true with exploration projects
sending robots and human to other worlds. American leadership in these areas is welcomed and used by other countries, even as they develop their own
national programs. The US government should make more of this and not treat it as an afterthought—or even worse, prohibit American leadership as the
House of Representatives is doing this week by banning any China collaboration or cooperation. (The proposed House continuing resolution for fiscal
year 2011 prohibits OSTP or NASA funds to be used for anything to do with China.) On a bigger stage I was struck by the demands of the Egyptian
protesters over the past few weeks for American leadership and engagement in reforming their country, while at the same time strongly resenting any
American interference in their country. This demand for American leadership and opposition to American hegemony may
seem inconsistent. It is not: it only emphasizes the need to recognize the difference and use leadership for
cooperation and engagement. If we Americans do this in the space program, we will accomplish more in our
many Earth, space science, and exploration projects, and we will raise higher the importance of the space
program on the national and international political agenda.
Independently solves conflict escalation
Nye, 08 – created the theory of “soft power,” distinguished service professor and former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, PhD in
Political Science from Harvard [March 7, 2008, Joseph S. Nye Jr., “Security and Smart Power,”
http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/9/1351]
Etzioni is correct that a
successful policy of security first will require the combi- nation of hard and soft
power. Combining the two instruments so that they reinforce rather than undercut each other is
crucial to success. Power is the ability to get the outcomes one wants. In the past,it was assumed that military power dominated most issues, but
in today’s world, the contexts of power differ greatly on military, economic, and transnational issues. These latter problems, including
everything from climate change to pandemics to transnational terrorism, pose some of the greatest
challenges we face today, and yet few are susceptible to purely military solutions. The only way to
grapple with these problems is through cooperation with others, and that requires smart power—a strategy that combines
the soft power of attraction with the hard power of coercion. For example ,American and British intelligence agen- cies report
that our use of hard power in Iraq without sufficient attention to soft power has increased rather than
reduced the number of Islamist terrorists throughout the past 5 years. The soft power of attraction will not win
over the hard core terrorists but it is essential in winning the hearts and minds of mainstream
Muslims,without whose sup- port success will be impossible in the long term. Yet all the polling evidence suggests
that American soft power has declined dramatically in the Muslim world. There is no simple military solution that will produce
the outcomes we want. Etzioni is clear on this and highly critical of the failure to develop a smart power strategy in Iraq. One wishes,
however, that he had spent a few more pages developing one for Iran.
It prevents formation of a power vacuum that risks extinction
Brzezinski 12 (Zbigniew, Professor of American Foreign Policy at the School of Advanced International
Studies – Johns Hopkins University, Counselor – CSIS and Trustee and Co-Chair – CSIS Advisory Board,
Former National Security Advisor – Carter, “After America”, Foreign Policy, January / February,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/artic les/2012/01/03/after_america?page=full)
For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single preeminent successor -- not even China. International
uncertainty, increased tension among global competitors, and even outright chaos would be far more likely
outcomes. While a sudden, massive crisis of the American system -- for instance, another financial crisis -- would
produce a fast-moving chain reaction leading to global political and economic disorder, a steady drift by America
into increasingly pervasive decay or endlessly widening warfare with Islam would be unlikely to produce, even by 2025, an effective global
successor. No single power will be ready by then to exercise the role that the world, upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expected
the United States to play: the leader of a new, globally cooperative world order. More probable would be a protracted
phase of rather inconclusive realignments of both global and regional power, with no grand winners and many more losers, in a setting of
international uncertainty and even of potentially fatal risks to global well-being. Rather than a world where dreams of democracy
flourish, a Hobbesian world of enhanced national security based on varying fusions of authoritarianism, nationalism, and religion
could ensue. The leaders of the world's second-rank powers, among them India, Japan, Russia, and some European countries, are already assessing the potential impact of U.S. decline on their
respective national interests. The Japanese, fearful of an assertive China dominating the Asian mainland, may be thinking of closer links with Europe. Leaders in India and Japan may be considering closer
Russia, while perhaps engaging in wishful thinking (even schadenfreude) about America's
its eye on the independent states of the former Soviet Union. Europe, not yet
cohesive, would likely be pulled in several directions: Germany and Italy toward Russia because of commercial interests, France and
political and even military cooperation in case America falters and China rises.
uncertain prospects, will almost certainly have
insecure Central Europe in favor of a politically tighter European Union, and Britain toward manipulating a balance within the EU while preserving its
special relationship with a declining United States. Others may move more rapidly to carve out their own regional spheres: Turkey in
the area of the old Ottoman Empire, Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere, and
so forth
. None of these countries, however, will have the requisite combination of
economic, financial, technological, and military power even to consider inheriting America's leading role. China, invariably mentioned as America's prospective successor, has an impressive imperial
lineage and a strategic tradition of carefully calibrated patience, both of which have been critical to its overwhelmingly successful, several-thousand-year-long history. China thus prudently accepts the
existing international system, even if it does not view the prevailing hierarchy as permanent. It recognizes that success depends not on the system's dramatic collapse but on its evolution toward a gradual
redistribution of power. Moreover, the basic reality is that China is not yet ready to assume in full America's role in the world. Beijing's leaders themselves have repeatedly emphasized
that on every important measure of development, wealth, and power, China will still be a modernizing and developing state several decades
from now, significantly behind not only the United States but also Europe and Japan in the major per capita indices of modernity and national power.
Accordingly, Chinese leaders have been restrained in laying any overt claims to global leadership. At some stage, however, a more assertive Chinese nationalism
could arise and damage China's international interests. A swaggering, nationalistic Beijing would unintentionally mobilize a
powerful regional coalition against itself. None of China's key neighbors -- India, Japan, and Russia -- is ready to acknowledge China's entitlement to America's place on
the global totem pole. They might even seek support from a waning America to offset an overly assertive China. The resulting regional scramble could become
intense, especially given the similar nationalistic tendencies among China's neighbors. A phase of acute international tension in Asia
could ensue. Asia of the 21st century could then begin to resemble Europe of the 20th century -- violent and bloodthirsty. At the same time, the
security of a number of weaker states located geographically next to major regional powers also depends on the international status quo
reinforced by America's global preeminence -- and would be made significantly more vulnerable in proportion to
America's decline. The states in that exposed position -- including Georgia, Taiwan, South Korea, Belarus, Ukraine,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, and the greater Middle East -- are today's geopolitical equivalents of nature's most
endangered species. Their fates are closely tied to the nature of the international environment left behind by a waning America, be it ordered and
restrained or, much more likely, self-serving and expansionist. A faltering United States could also find its strategic partnership with
Mexico in jeopardy. America's economic resilience and political stability have so far mitigated many of the challenges
posed by such sensitive neighborhood issues as economic dependence, immigration, and the narcotics trade. A decline in American power,
however, would likely undermine the health and good judgment of the U.S. economic and political systems. A waning United States
would likely be more nationalistic, more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others' development. The
worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically
Another consequence of American decline could be a
corrosion of the generally cooperative management of the global commons -- shared interests such as sea lanes, space,
cyberspace, and the environment, whose protection is imperative to the long-term growth of the global
economy and the continuation of basic geopolitical stability. In almost every case, the potential absence of a constructive and
influential U.S. role would fatally undermine the essential communality of the global commons because the superiority and
ubiquity of American power creates order where there would normally be conflict. None of this will necessarily come to pass. Nor
is the concern that America's decline would generate global insecurity, endanger some vulnerable states, and produce a more
aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents.
troubled North American neighborhood an argument for U.S. global supremacy. In fact, the strategic complexities of the world in the 21st century make such supremacy
unattainable. But those dreaming today of America's collapse would probably come to regret it. And as the world after America would be increasingly complicated and chaotic, it is imperative that the
United States pursue a new, timely strategic vision for its foreign policy -- or start bracing itself for a dangerous slide into global turmoil.
1ac NASA reinvigoration advantage
NASA is bleeding like a sieve—this will irreversibly collapse diplomacy and EU relations
Vertesi 12 (Janet Vertesi is a sociologist of science and technology at Princeton University who has worked
with NASA mission teams since 2006. Via the Op-Ed Project Public Voices Fellowship. “Lost in space? Cuts to
NASA threaten innovation, diplomacy” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/opinion/lost-in-space-cutsto-nasa-threaten-innovation-diplomacy/13173/, Donnie)
Planetary scientists and space aficionados alike are up in arms over NASA’s 2013 budget, released last week.
The agency announced that it would pull out of a mission partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA)
due to budget cuts. That project, called the “ExoMars” Mission, would have sent two robotic vehicles to the Red
Planet: one to scour its surface and the other to orbit overhead, both searching for signs of the planet’s past
ability to harbor life. And the Mars Program is not the only victim of the current budget climate. The cuts will
affect missions in their prime, like the Cassini Mission to Saturn, and missions in their infancy, like a planned
explorer to Jupiter’s oceanic moon Europa, both of which involve strong European connections. This on top of
a year where NASA has already flip-flopped on agreements with its European partners over several missionsin-planning, from a gravitational waves detection project to a joint mission to Jupiter’s moons. In each case,
NASA initially acted as a partner, only to leave ESA scrambling to make up the costs. This about-face is not
only poor diplomacy, it is damaging to America’s long-term interests in space and on the ground. As a
sociologist who studies robotic space exploration teams, I have witnessed first-hand the power of international
partnerships in space. Take, for example, the Cassini Mission to Saturn, the orbiter in the Saturn system that is
currently touring the planet’s majestic moons and rings. An American-European partnership conceived in the
1980s that arrived at Saturn in 2004, not a week goes by that the Cassini team doesn’t make a breakthrough
scientific discovery, such as the active water geysers on the distant ice moon Enceladus, or return a
breathtaking image of Saturn’s rings that inspires the next generation of young scientists. Cassini has also
produced astonishing technological feats, such as the Huygens probe to Titan: the first man-made object ever
to land on another planet’s moon. Cassini is one of the “Flagship” missions, the largest class in terms of
scientific scope and funding. But even smaller, less expensive NASA missions such as the Mars Exploration
Rovers regularly benefit from European instruments and scientists who play an essential role in the search for
past water on Mars. These relationships also prove critical in scientific analysis, as scientists frequently
combine data from European and American-built robotic explorers to get a richer, fuller picture of the planets
they study. This is what international cooperation in space looks like. Neither agency could achieve these feats
alone, but working together they bring countless benefits to American science, technology, and industry. Such
partnerships produce other benefits, too. Sociological studies all agree that the best source of group innovation
is inter-organizational collaboration. Exposing people to new ideas and new ways of doing things frequently
provides the “missing piece” to the puzzle. International missions, therefore, create especially fertile ground for
new ideas. Scientific insights and engineering solutions are pushed to new heights, and mission-mates
frequently work together to sketch out innovative concepts for the next generation of planetary explorers. It is
especially unfortunate that the very missions that NASA is pulling out of now were themselves born of ideas
and relationships that arose from past, successful international partnerships. Getting international missions off
the ground isn’t easy. An intergovernmental agency, ESA can commit more money at one go for an entire
project; while NASA, subject to the yearly whims of Congress, can only commit to one year at a time. Because
missions can take decades to plan and execute, they are especially vulnerable to political turmoil or economic
crisis. But in rough economic times, cost-sharing between agencies is a guarantor of success. No single agency
can foot the entire bill, but together they regularly accomplish more than one nation could afford alone. In fact,
it is often during such rough times that we need international collaboration the most. During the recession in
the early 1990s, the then-NASA administrator tried to pull the plug on Cassini, citing high costs. Fortunately,
higher-ups took the longer view. Investment in the mission provided much-needed jobs and economic stimulus
at home. But equally important, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Block, the mission
would also build relationships that would endure and even lead the way through whatever tumult was to come.
As we face another period of international political and economic instability almost twenty years later, we
would again be remiss to walk away from these fragile, yet essential, transnational ties with the excuse that we
have our own gardens to tend. There are long-term disadvantages to continuing to disappoint our ESA
colleagues. Our former partners are already looking elsewhere for more stable partnerships on which to build
their scientific, technical, and diplomatic futures. Going forward, NASA must make every effort to
preserve and prioritize these fragile relationships. Otherwise, the most important returns on
investment for mission success stories like Cassini – the human investment – will be irrevocably lost.
Great power war
O’Sullivan, 4 – vice president of the Mission Critical Networks business area, which includes all FAA
programs, as well as the Alaska Flight Services Modernization and OASIS programs [March 31, 2004, John
O'Sullivan, “Europe and the Establishment,” The National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/article/europeand-the-establishment-2608]
The report's starting point -- that U.S.-European relations are extremely important -- is undeniable. A united
Western alliance would shape world institutions in line with values and practices rooted in liberty and
democracy and coax rising powers such as India and China into going along with this international status quo
for the foreseeable future. Indeed, this is already happening as China accepts liberal economic rules at home in
order to enter institutions such as the G7 and the World Trade Organization. By contrast, a disunited West
would tempt such powers to play off Europe and America against each other and foster a global jockeying for
power not unlike the maneuvering between a half-dozen great powers that led to 1914.
And extinction from asteroids
Urias et al 96 (COL (Sel) John M. Urias (USA) “Planetary Defense: Catastrophic Health Insurance for Planet
Earth” http://csat.au.af.mil/2025/volume3/vol3ch16.pdf, Donnie)
As discussed in this paper, the development, testing, and deployment costs of a planetary defense system likely will be staggering, especially if the threetier PDS concept is adopted. However, we believe the catastrophic results of a large asteroid or comet impact, including the
potential extinction
of the human race, justify such an expenditure, especially if it can be incrementally funded. Obviously, since
the planetary defense problem is global in nature, one should not expect that the PDS costs will be borne by
one or even a few countries. Indeed, such an endeavor will certainly fail without the cooperation and commitment of the entire global
community. In this sense, Europe must be a major player in the successful implementation of a PDS .
When considering future European involvement in space-related issues, it is important to include the activities
of the European Space Agency (ESA), with its international perspective and influence . Without a doubt, the ESA will
be critical to the successful development and deployment of the PDS, especially with its close ties to France as
one of ESA’s most influential members. Since France does not favor the influence of the US on European
policy decisions, the US should use caution as it identifies requirements and ideas for a PDS. However,
considering the need for global funding to support the development of the technologies and capabilities
required for such a system, the US also must maintain open lines of communication with every major player to
achieve a viable solution to the planetary defense problem. Given the normal reluctance of most countries to accept solutions or
direction originating from a superpower such as the US automatically, it may be more effective to use a neutral element as the lead to pull the global
community together and develop a strategy that all parties can support. Further, since there will likely be reservations, mistrust, and possibly even
rejection due to the dual-use potential of the PDS as a strategic weapon, a neutral element would help to alleviate such fears.
Extinction!
Sackett 10 (PhD in theoretical physics, the Director of the Australian National University (ANU) Research
School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories “Science
diplomacy: Collaboration for solutions” http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/2010/08/science-diplomacycollaboration-for-solutions/)
Imagine for a moment that the globe is inhabited by a single individual who roams free across outback plains,
through rainforests, across pure white beaches — living off the resources available. Picture the immensity of the
world surrounding this one person and ask yourself, what possible impact could this single person have on the
planet? Now turn your attention to today’s reality. Almost 7 billion people inhabit the planet and this number
increases at an average of a little over one per cent per year. That’s about 2 more mouths to feed every second.
Do these 7 billion people have an impact on the planet? Yes. An irreversible impact? Probably. Taken together
this huge number of people has managed to change the face of the Earth and threaten the very systems that
support them. We are now embarked on a trajectory that, if unchecked, will certainly have detrimental
impacts on our way of life and to natural ecosystems. Some of these are irreversible, including the extinction of
many species. But returning to that single individual, surely two things are true. A single person could not have
caused all of this, nor can a single person solve all the associated problems. The message here is that the
human-induced global problems that confront us cannot be solved by any one individual, group, agency or
nation. It will take a large collective effort to change the course that we are on; nothing less will suffice. Our
planet is facing several mammoth challenges: to its atmosphere, to its resources, to its inhabitants. Wicked
problems such as climate change, over-population, disease, and food, water and energy security require
concerted efforts and worldwide collaboration to find and implement effective, ethical and sustainable
solutions. These are no longer solely scientific and technical matters. Solutions must be viable in the larger
context of the global economy, global unrest and global inequality. Common understandings and commitment
to action are required between individuals, within communities and across international networks. Science can
play a special role in international relations. Its participants share a common language that transcends mother
tongue and borders. For centuries scientists have corresponded and collaborated on international scales in
order to arrive at a better and common understanding of the natural and human world. Values integral to
science such as transparency, vigorous inquiry and informed debate also support effective international
relation practices. Furthermore, given the long-established global trade of scientific information and results,
many important international links are already in place at a scientific level. These links can lead to coalitionbuilding, trust and cooperation on sensitive scientific issues which, when supported at a political level, can
provide a ‘soft politics’ route to other policy dialogues. That is, if nations are already working together
on global science issues, they may be more likely to be open to collaboration on other global issues such as
trade and security. Many countries have recognised the value of science diplomacy. In March this year, the US
passed a bill to fund a Global Science Program for Security, Competitiveness and Diplomacy. Earlier, President
Obama used his speech in Cairo to announce an expanded team of science envoys in the Middle East, Africa
and Southeast Asia. In April, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband made the case for research as a political
bridge. In Australia, there are two science envoy posts, one in Brussels and the other in Washington DC. In my
own role as Chief Scientist, I engage with researchers and agency heads of other nations to improve Australia’s
scientific relations. For example, my recent trip to the United States included a visit with Professor Daniel
Kammen, Clean Energy Envoy of the US State Department, and previous trips have established a connection
with Chief Scientists and Scientific Academy Presidents in Britain, China, India, New Zealand, and the United
States. Central to these diplomatic efforts, is the establishment and continued nurturing of collaboration.
Scientific collaboration operates best as a network of individual researchers supported by corporate and
government policy and investment. The keys then are forging links at the ground level and providing clear and
consistent bi-national and multi-national policy and funding frameworks to sustain these links.
The plan is key to starve off NASA collapse
Spudis 1 (Paul D. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. He
was Deputy Leader of the Science Team for the Department of Defense Clementine mission to the Moon in
1994 and is the Principal Investigator of an imaging radar experiment on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission,
launched to the Moon in October, 2008. In 2004, he was a member of the President’s Commission on the
Implementation of U. S. Space Exploration Policy and was presented with the NASA Distinguished Public
Service Medal for that work. He is the recipient of the 2006 Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics, awarded
by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific
papers and four books, including The Once and Future Moon, and (with Ben Bussey) The Clementine Atlas of
the Moon. “THE CASE FOR RENEWED HUMAN EXPLORATION OF THE MOON”
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Bibliography/p/71.pdf, Donnie)
The history of the United States shows that only two kinds of big engineering projects enjoy long-term funding
stability: those related to national defense (e.g., the Panama canal, the Apollo program) and those that build
and maintain our economic infrastructure (e.g., the TVA project, the interstate highway system). Neither the
search for worlds around other stars nor extraterrestrial life fit into those categories. Thus, they will never be
funded at levels permitting significant levels of human activity. And if there are no people in space, an activity
that marshals and crystallizes the lukewarm public support the space program enjoys, NASA will whither away.
For the last 30 years, NASA has maintained an Apollo management-style without a long-term space goal. These
years have largely been spent engaged in bureaucratic struggles to survive. Scientific and engineering talent has
drifted away through attrition and retirement and innovative ideas and clever plans have been lost or buried.
What’s the alternative to NASA’s demise? We must return people to the Moon. A lunar return is
achievable within five years, at costs an order of magnitude lower than that of a manned Mars mission.
Recently water ice deposits were discovered in permanently dark areas near the poles of the Moon (Nozette et
al., 1996). The surrounding mountain peaks are bathed in near constant sunlight (Bussey et al., 1999). This
terrain is one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the inner Solar System. The potential for economic
explosion, scientific discovery and national security is staggering. The polar ice can support human life, both as
water and as breathable oxygen derived from it. We can also use the hydrogen and oxygen extracted from water
as rocket propellant. With launch costs approaching $50,000 per pound to low Earth orbit by Shuttle, one can
see that the value of over 10 billion tons of water ice located in the lunar polar regions is considerable. By
developing the infrastructure for operations on the Moon, we obtain routine human access to GEO, or
geosynchronous orbit, the 23,000 mile high zone where all Earth’s communication satellites orbit. Why is this
important? The next generation of comsats will be enormously heavy, complex machines, requiring megawatts
of power and maintenance by people. Such satellites will be needed as demand for bandwidth, the prime
commodity of the 21st century information society, increases exponentially. The ice deposits on the Moon will
provide propellant to help support the Earth-Moon transportation infrastructure. Using lunar propellant, we
can access GEO with machine and human capability to build, service, and operate the comsats of the new
century. Such capability would be worth literally trillions of dollars. The US has a unique opportunity to
accomplish important national goals. A return to the Moon will aid US security by giving the United States
access to valuable lunar resources (our first, off-world “El Dorado”), and will augment our expanding economic
infrastructure by providing routine access to all “energy levels” of Earthorbital space operations. A program to
return to the Moon ties NASA to important national priorities and makes it a player in a burgeoning and
emerging Solar System economy. The Moon gives NASA an exciting, vigorous mission and paves the
way to the planets beyond.
The plan gives NASA an achievable mandate, that’s key
Spudis 11 (http://www.cislunarnext.org/uploads/2/9/6/0/2960628/cislunarnext.pdf, Donnie)
Our national space program is in crisis The United States Space Program is going nowhere fast. No Space
Shuttle, no American access to space, a cancelled Constellation program, massive layos of a skilled technical
workforce, an International Space Station at risk of a possible catastrophe, recent Russian launch failures
(currently the only possible way to get to and from the ISS), dependence on unproven and receding commercial
transport and an expensive NASA Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle with no de-ned purpose and -rst crewed ight a
decade away, if ever. What’s the way out of this bad situation? Sustainability In an era of limited resources, our
challenge is to create a worthwhile space program with an expenditure rate that falls at or below a supportable
level of approximately 0.4% of the Federal budget. Given this reality (regardless of assertions about projected
deep space destinations) it is highly likely that cislunar (or Earth-Moon) space will be the sphere of human
space operations for the foreseeable future. The questions should be: What are we doing in space and why are
we doing it? Attempting a series of space exploration “-rsts” (ags-and-footprints forever) implies one set of
activities and missions. Incrementally developing a permanent space transportation infrastructure, one that
creates an expanding sphere of human operations, suggests a dierent approach. The real debate The real debate
is not about launch vehicles or spacecraft or even destinations; it is about the long-term purpose of our space
program. One approach requires mega-rockets to distant targets for touch-and-go missions, the “Apollo”
template. Another approach is an incremental, go-somewhere-to-stay-and-then-expand-onwards mind set –
call it the “Shuttle” approach. The one that you adopt and follow depends on what purpose you believe human
space ight serves. Mars? Because Mars may harbor former or existing life, NASA has presumed that it is our
“ultimate destination” in space. In eect, the human space ight eort is rationalized as “The Quest for Life”
(which means maybe -nding a fossil or bacterium, not ET). Thus, debate about what to build, where to go and
how to do it is always formulated towards massively expensive missions to Mars. This unspoken assumption
has been at the root of most space objective studies for the past 20 years. Mars was the end point of President
George H.W. Bush’s Space Exploration Initiative, President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration, of
former Lockheed-Martin President Norm Augustine’s two reports, and a myriad of space groups and societies.
From the 1990s to the present, a multi-billion dollar robotic campaign has sent mission after mission to Mars,
each discovering that the red planet once had liquid water. The mania for Mars and preoccupation with
searching for life there has limited our perceptions of the space program and distorted our reality of what is
possible or attainable on reasonable time scales with available resources – the simple fact is that Mars is
unreachable in both technical and -scal terms now and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Real Goals and
Objectives In the long term, the goal for human space ight is to create the capability to go where we choose,
for as long as we need, and do what we want. For the sake of argument, if one accepts such a goal, which model
makes more sense as a step to implement it: the Apollo template ( ags and footprints) or the Shuttle template
(an expanding, incremental extension into space)? We need a navy to “sail on the ocean of space,” If our goal is
to “sail on the ocean of space,” we need a eet. Navies don’t operate with just one class of ship because one
class isn’t capable of doing all the various and necessary jobs. Not all ships will look or operate the same
because they have dierent purposes and destinations. Needed are transports, way stations, supply depots, the
International Space Station, and ports. In space terms: spacecraft to get people and equipment to and from
Low Earth Orbit, to and from points beyond LEO, to way stations and outposts at Geosynchronous Earth Orbit,
to stable Liberation Points that are located at the equilibrium of the Moon and Earth gravity, to low lunar orbit,
and to the lunar surface. To fuel and provision our space eet, we require supply and propellant depots in
LEO, L-1 and on the lunar surface. Ports of call are all the places we may go. Initially, those ports are satellites
in various orbits, which require service, maintenance and replacement with larger, more capable systems.
Later, our harbor will be the surface of the Moon, to harvest its resources, thereby creating more capability and
provisions from space. Reliable and frequent access to any place in Solar System, not singular trips to a couple
of destinations, should be our ultimate goal. By designing and building mission-speci-c vehicles and elements
(the “Apollo” template) forfeits going everywhere and doing everything. In contrast, adopting the “Shuttle”
model does not preclude going to Mars; it enables missions to Mars in an aordable manner that sustains
repeated trips, using the infrastructure and propellant resources provided by a space faring navy. Building a
series of one-o spacecraft – huge launch vehicles to dash to Mars for expensive, unsustainable extravaganzas –
will keep us locked into our current predicament. The Space program needs rethinking It is the mind set of the
space program that needs re-thinking – not the next destination, not the next launch vehicle, and not the next
spacecraft. How can we change the discussion? First, we need to understand and articulate the true choices so
that people can see and evaluate the dierent approaches and requirements. Second, we need to develop sample
architectures that -t the requirements for “sustainability.” Finally, we need to get such plans in front of the
national leadership. There is no guarantee that they will accept it or even listen to the arguments. But right
now, they have no alternatives to consider because they are not hearing the case for any. A cost-eective,
sustainable human space ight program must be continuous, incremental and cumulative. Our space program
must continually expand our reach, creating new capabilities over time. Moreover, it should contribute to
compelling national economic, scienti-c and security interests. Building a lasting and reusable space
transportation system does that, whereas a series of limited “PR stunt” missions will not. The original intended
vision of the Shuttle system was to incrementally move into the Solar System – -rst a Shuttle to-and-from LEO,
then a Space Station as a jumping o platform and then go beyond LEO into cislunar space. The Shuttle-derived
heavy-lift cargo variant was always envisioned to go beyond LEO and on to the Moon. Decommissioning the
Shuttle Program, the only proven operational heavy lift human launch capability without a replacement to get
U.S. astronauts to space is a terrible mistake. The right answer The right answer is to adopt the principle that
we are going somewhere with the purpose of gradually, yet continuously expanding human reach. Initially, our
domain is cislunar space. We should develop an architecture using smaller assets, launching more
frequently, working together to build up new and expanded capabilities throughout cislunar space. America
can flyy spacecraft, create new commercial markets, access and protect the International Space Station and
expand beyond LEO. By developing cislunar space next, our values and the societal paradigm of free markets,
rule of la
Edit highlighting
Killeen 5 (Timothy L., Director – National Center for Atmospheric Research, “NASA Earth Science”, CQ
Congressional Testimony, 4-28, Lexis)
The first example is probably well known to you. The ozone "holes" in the Antarctic and Arctic were monitored from space by various NASA satellite
systems, including the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS). The diagnosis of the physical and chemical mechanisms responsible for these dangerous changes to
our protective ozone shield was made possible by the combination of observations, modeling, and theory supported by NASA. In fact, it was a NASA high-altitude aircraft
that made the "smoking gun" measurements that convinced the scientific and policy communities that chlorine
compounds produced by various human activities were centrally responsible for the observed ozone loss. Following these
observations, international protocols were put in place that are beginning to ameliorate the global-scale ozone
loss. The TOMS instrument has provided an ongoing source of data that permits us to track the level of ozone in the stratosphere, the annual opening and closing of the
"ozone hole," and how this phenomenon is changing over time. These continuing measurements and analyses and the effective regulatory response have
led, among other things, to a reduction in projected deaths from skin cancer worldwide. Last week, President Bush mentioned proposed rules to
limit air pollution from coalfired power plants. Air pollution is clearly an important concern. NASA has played a major role in the
development of new technologies that can monitor the sources and circulation patterns of air pollution globally.
It is another tremendous story of science serving society through innovation. In this case, through an international collaboration, NASA deployed a one-of-a-kind instrument
designed to observe global carbon monoxide and its transport from the NASA Terra spacecraft. These animations show the first global observations of air pollution. Sources of
carbon monoxide include industrial processes (see, for example, source regions in the Pacific Rim) and fires (for example in Amazonia). These global-scale data from space
have helped change our understanding of the relationship between pollution and air quality - we now know that pollution is not solely or even primarily a local or regional
problem. California's air quality is influenced by industrial activity in Asia, and Europe's air quality is influenced by activities here in America. From such pioneering work,
operational systems can now be designed to observe pollution events, the global distribution of chemicals and particulate matter
in the atmosphere, and the ways in which these substances interact and affect the ability of the atmosphere to sustain life such a system will undoubtedly underpin future efforts to understand, monitor, and manage air quality globally. Without NASA's commitment to
innovation in the Earth sciences, it is hard to believe that such an incredible new capability would be available
today. The Promise of Earth Observations in the Next Decade The achievements of the last several decades have laid the foundation for an unprecedented era of discovery
and innovation in Earth system science. Advances in observing technologies have been accompanied by vast improvements in computing and data processing. When the Earth
Observing System satellites were being designed, processing and archiving the data was a central challenge. The Terra satellite produces about 194 gigabytes of raw data per
day, which seemed a daunting prospect at the time of its definition. Now laptop memories are measured in gigabytes, students can work with remote sensing datasets on their
laptops, and a large data center like NCAR increases our data holdings by about 1000 gigabytes per day. The next generation of high performance computing systems, which
will be deployed during the next five years or so, will be petascale systems, meaning that they will be able to process millions of gigabytes of data. The ongoing revolution in
information technology has provided us with capabilities we could hardly conceive of when the current generation of Earth observing satellites was being developed. We have
just begun to take advantage of the synergies between these technological areas. The U.S., through NASA, is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this technological
opportunity. Example 3: Weather Forecasting Weather forecasting in the Southern Hemisphere has been dramatically improved through NASA's contributions, and this
experience illustrates the power of remote sensing for further global improvements in weather prediction. The lack of surface- based data in the Southern Hemisphere once
meant that predictive skill lagged considerably behind that achieved in the Northern Hemisphere. The improvement in the accuracy of Southern Hemisphere weather
forecasting is well documented and almost entirely due to the increased use of remote-sensing data. But improvements in the quality of satellite data were not sufficient.
Improvements in data assimilation a family of techniques for integrating observational results into predictive models were also necessary. The combination has resulted in
rapid improvement in Southern Hemisphere forecasting, which is now nearly equal to that in northern regions. Data assimilation capabilities continue to advance rapidly.
One can now easily conceive of forecast systems that will fuse data from satellites, ground-based systems, databases, and models to provide predictions with unprecedented
detail and accuracy - perhaps reaching natural limits of predictability. A new generation of weather forecast models with cloud-resolving spatial resolution is coming on line,
and these models show significant promise for improving forecast skills across the board. Use of new NASA remote sensing data from upcoming missions such as Calipso
(Cloud- Aerosol and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite) and CloudSat will be essential to fully validate and tune these new capabilities which will serve the nation in providing
improved hurricane and severe storm prediction, and in the development of numerous decision support systems reliant on state-of-the-art numerical weather prediction
capabilities. Example 4: Earth System Models Data from NASA missions are central to constructing more comprehensive and detailed models that will more realistically
represent the complexity of the Earth system. Cloud observations from MODIS (the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and precipitation measurements from
GPM (the Global Precipitation Mission), for example, are critical to improving the representation of clouds and the water cycle in such models. Observations from MODIS and
Landsat are fundamental to the development of more sophisticated representation of marine and terrestrial ecosystems and atmosphere-land surface interactions. The
inclusion of this detail will help in the creation of true Earth system models that will enable detailed investigation of the interactions of Earth system processes and multiple
environmental stresses within physically consistent simulated systems. In general terms, Earth system observations represent the only means of validating Earth system
model predictions. Our confidence in short-term, regional-scale weather predictions is based on how closely they match observed regional conditions. Assessing the
performance of global-scale, longer-term model predictions likewise depends on comparing model results with observational records. Scientific confidence in the ability of
general circulation models to represent Earth's climate has been greatly enhanced by comparing model results for the last century with the observational records from that
period. At the same time, the sparse and uneven nature of past observational records is an ongoing source of uncertainty in the evaluation of model results. The existence of
much more comprehensive and consistent global measurements from space such as the data from the NASA Terra, Aqua, and Aura satellites is a giant step forward in this
regard, and, if maintained, will enable much more rigorous evaluation of model performance in the future. In summary, Earth system models, with increasing temporal and
spatial resolutions and validated predictive capabilities, will be used by industry and governmental decision makers across a host of domains into the foreseeable future. This
knowledge base will drive new economies and efficiencies within our society. I believe that requirements flowing from the needs and capabilities of sophisticated Earth system
models will be very useful for NASA in developing strategic roadmaps for future missions. C. The Importance of Careful Planning The central role of NASA in supporting
Earth system science, the demonstrated success and impact of previous and current NASA missions, and the promise of continued advances in scientific understanding and
societal benefits all argue for a careful, analytical approach to major modifications in the NASA Earth science program. As noted above, the development of space systems is a
time-consuming and difficult process. Today's actions and plans will have long-term consequences for our nation's capabilities in this area. The link between plans and actions
is one of the most important points I want to address today. From the outside, the interagency planning process seems to be experiencing substantial difficulties in
maintaining this link. The NASA Earth science program is part of two major Presidential initiatives, the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) and the Global Earth
Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). With regard to the CCSP, it is not apparent that the strategies and plans developed through the interagency process are having much
impact on NASA decision-making. In January 2004, then- Administrator of NASA, Sean O'Keefe, called for acceleration of the NASA Glory mission because of the direct
relevance of the mission to understanding the roles of aerosols in the climate system, which is one of the highest-priority science questions defined in the CCSP research
strategy. NASA is now proposing cancellation of the mission. As I have emphasized throughout this testimony, the progress of and benefits from Earth system science research
are contingent upon close coordination between research, modeling, and observations. The close coordination of program planning among the agencies that support these
activities is also a necessity. This coordination currently appears to be fragile. The effect of significant redirections in NASA and reduction in NASA's Earth science effort are
equally worrisome in the case of the Administration's GEOSS initiative, which is focused on improving the international coordination of environmental observing systems.
Both NASA and NOAA satellite programs are vital to this effort. The science community is very supportive of the GEOSS concept and goals. There are over 100 space-based
remote-sensing systems that are either operating or planned by various nations for the next decade. Collaboration among space systems, between space- and ground-based
systems, and between suppliers and users of observational data is critical to avoiding duplication of effort and to getting the most out of the investments in observing
technology. The tragic example of the Indian Ocean Tsunami demonstrates the need for such coordination. The tsunami was detected and observed before hitting land, but the
absence of effective communication links prevented warnings from reaching those who needed them in time. A functioning GEOSS could lead to major improvements in the
rapid availability of data and warnings, and the U.S. is right to make development of such a system a priority. But U.S. credibility and leadership of this initiative will be called
into question if our nation is unable or unwilling to coordinate and maintain the U.S. programs that make up the core of our proposed contribution. D. Answers to Questions
Posed by the Committee My testimony to this point has outlined my views on a series of key issues for the NASA Earth science program. Much of the text found above is
relevant to consideration of the specific questions posed by the Committee in its letter of invitation. In this section, I provide more direct answers to these questions to the
extent possible and appropriate. How should NASA prioritize currently planned and future missions? What criteria should NASA use in doing so? I believe that NASA should
work with the scientific and technical community and its partner agencies to define a NASA Earth science plan that is fully compatible with the overall CCSP and GEOSS
science strategies. In my view, the interaction with the scientific and technical community should include both input from and review by the National Research Council (NRC)
and direct interaction with the strong national community of Earth science investigators and the aerospace industry who are very familiar with NASA capabilities and
developing technological opportunities. Competitive peer review processes should be used appropriately in assessing the merit of competing approaches and in key decisionmaking. I believe NASA should also find a means of involving users and potential users of NASA-generated data in this process, perhaps through public comment periods or a
series of workshops. Sufficient time should be allotted to this process for a careful and deliberative evaluation of options. This science plan should then guide the process of
setting mission priorities. Defining criteria to use in comparing and deciding upon potential missions would be an important part of this planning exercise. I would
recommend consideration of a set of criteria that include: -- compatibility with science priorities in the CCSP and GEOSS science plans -- potential scientific return from
mission -- technological risk -- direct and indirect societal benefits -- cost. I believe that the decadal planning activity underway at the NRC in response to a request from
NASA and NOAA is a valuable step in this process. What are the highest priority unaddressed or unanswered questions in Earth science observations from space? I believe
this question is most appropriately addressed through the community process suggested above. There are many important Earth science questions, and prioritizing among
them is best done in a deliberative and transparent process that involves extensive input from and discussion by the science community. I would personally cite soil moisture,
three-dimensional cloud characteristics, global vector tropospheric winds, pollutant characteristics and transport, carbon fluxes, and aerosol distributions as all high priority
measurements to make on a global scale. What have been the most important contributions to society that have come from NASA Earth sciences over the last decade (or two)?
NASA Earth science programs have played a key role in developing our understanding of the Earth as a coupled system of inter- related
parts, and in the identification
and documentation of a series of global-scale changes in the Earth's environment,
including ozone depletion , land use and land cover change, loss of biodiversity, and climate change . Other examples of societal
contributions include improved weather forecasting, improved understanding of the large-scale climate variations, such as the El Nino- Southern Oscillation and the North
Atlantic Oscillation that alter seasonal patterns of rainfall, and improved understanding of the status of and changes in marine and terrestrial ecosystems that contributes to
more effective management of natural resources. What future benefits to the nation (societal applications) are possible that NASA Earth sciences could provide? What gaps in
our knowledge must we fill before those future benefits are possible? In a broad sense, NASA Earth
science activities are part of developing a global Earth
provide ongoing and accurate information about the status of and changes in the atmosphere, oceans, and
marine and terrestrial ecosystems that sustain life, including the impact of human activities. The continued
development of observation systems, sophisticated Earth system models, data assimilation methods, and information technologies holds the
promise of much improved predictions of weather and climate variations and much more effective prediction and warning of natural hazards. Much
has already been accomplished to lay the groundwork for such a system, but many important questions remain. Some of the most important have to do
with the functioning and human alteration of the Earth's carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles, and how these cycles interact; the regional
information system that can
manifestation of global scale climate change; and the reactions of ecosystems to simultaneous multiple stresses.
1ac satellite advantage
Cislunar space access by the US is uniquely key to develop propellents to allow satellite repair
Spudis 11 (Paul D. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
He was Deputy Leader of the Science Team for the Department of Defense Clementine mission to the Moon in
1994 and is the Principal Investigator of an imaging radar experiment on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission,
launched to the Moon in October, 2008. In 2004, he was a member of the President’s Commission on the
Implementation of U. S. Space Exploration Policy and was presented with the NASA Distinguished Public
Service Medal for that work. He is the recipient of the 2006 Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics, awarded
by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific
papers and four books, including The Once and Future Moon, and (with Ben Bussey) The Clementine Atlas of
the Moon. “The Moon: Point of Entry to Cislunar Space” http://www.ndu.edu/press/space-Ch12.html, Donnie)
The Moon has a major advantage over other potential destinations beyond LEO as it is both close and easily
accessible.Only a 3-day trip from Earth, the Moon is close enough for existing space systems to
reach.Additionally, it is only a 3-light-second round trip between Earth and Moon, which allows robotic
missions on the lunar surface to be controlled remotely from the Earth in near real time.The Moon's low
gravity permits landing and operations with a minimal expenditure of energy. The Moon is a scientific
laboratory of unique character.Its location near Earth ensures that it records the geological history of this part
of the solar system.Such history includes the impact of solid objects and the solar wind and their possible
changes with time.It holds a historical record of cosmic radiation, including nearby supernovae. The Moon's
timeless surface preserves a record of ancient events, and whatever is preserved on the lunar surface must have
also affected the Earth.This record is long gone from our dynamic terrestrial surface but remains preserved on
the static, ancient lunar surface. The Moon has the material and energy resources needed to support human
presence and to begin building a long-lasting transportation infrastructure.Its surface is covered by a very finegrained soil that is useful as radiation shielding and building material.5Oxygen extracted from lunar materials
can support life and be used for rocket propellant.Light elements, such as hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen, are
present in the lunar soil in low concentrations, but in enough quantity to permit their extraction and use.More
importantly, we now find that significant amounts of hydrogen are present in soils at high latitudes and that
the polar areas may contain water ice in permanently dark areas. Because the spin axis of the Moon is nearly
perpendicular to its orbit around the Sun, some areas at the poles are in near-permanent sunlight. This is a
unique asset: areas in constant sunlight for power generation are proximate to shadowed terrain enriched in
the light elements, such as hydrogen. Another asset unique to the Moon is its far side, the only place in our
solar system permanently shielded from Earth's radio noise. Here we can scan the sky to observe the universe
in entirely new areas of the spectrum. The Moon is the first, but not the last, destination in the VSE. It is not
only an important destination in its own right, but also an enabling asset. The objective of this program is to go
to the Moon to learn how to use off-planet resources to create new capability and to make future space flight
easier and cheaper.6Rocket propellant made on the Moon permits routine access to cislunar space by both
people and machines, and is vital to the servicing and protection of national strategic assets and for the repair
and refurbishing of commercial satellites. The United States cannot afford to forfeit its lead in the
access of cislunar space.There are serious national security and economic ramifications if our leaders fail to
recognize the importance of the Moon to our future in space and here on Earth.
Satellite disruption and run down is inevitable, the plan is the only way to maintain them at low
cost
Spudis 11 (Paul D. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
He was Deputy Leader of the Science Team for the Department of Defense Clementine mission to the Moon in
1994 and is the Principal Investigator of an imaging radar experiment on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission,
launched to the Moon in October, 2008. In 2004, he was a member of the President’s Commission on the
Implementation of U. S. Space Exploration Policy and was presented with the NASA Distinguished Public
Service Medal for that work. He is the recipient of the 2006 Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics, awarded
by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific
papers and four books, including The Once and Future Moon, and (with Ben Bussey) The Clementine Atlas of
the Moon. “The Moon: Point of Entry to Cislunar Space” http://www.ndu.edu/press/space-Ch12.html, Donnie)
The world relies on a variety of satellites in cislunar space—weather satellites, GPS, communications systems,
and a wide variety of reconnaissance platforms. Commercial spacecraft makes up a multi-billion-dollar market,
providing telephone, Internet, radio, and video services. America has invested billions in space hardware. Yet
at the moment, we have no infrastructure to service, repair, refurbish, or protect any of these spacecraft. They
are vulnerable to severe damage or permanent loss by accident or intentional action. If we lose a
satellite, it must be replaced. From redesign though fabrication and launch, such replacement takes years and
involves extraordinary investment in the design and fabrication to make them as reliable as possible. We
cannot access these spacecraft because it is not feasible to maintain a human-tended servicing capability in
Earth orbit; at thousands of dollars per pound, the costs of launching orbital transfer vehicles and propellant
are excessive. Creating the ability to refuel in orbit by using propellant made from lunar materials will
revolutionize the way nations view and use space. Satellites will be repaired rather than
abandoned . Assets can be protected rather than written off . Very large satellite complexes can
be built and serviced over long periods, creating new capabilities and expanding bandwidth (a critical
commodity of modern society) for a wide variety of purposes. And along the way, there will be new
opportunities and discoveries. We will become a true spacefaring species. A return to the Moon with the
purpose of learning to extract and use its resources creates a new paradigm for space operations. Space
becomes a realm in our economic sphere, not an exotic environment for arcane studies. Such a mission ties the
American space program to its original roots, making us more secure and more prosperous. It also enables new
and broader opportunities for science and exploration. A transportation infrastructure that can routinely access
various points of cislunar space can take humanity to the planets. We will learn to use what we find in space to
create new spacefaring capabilities. A cislunar transportation system, fueled by lunar propellant,
will be the transcontinental railroad of the new millennium. 34
Permanence is key-every system is in danger
Spudis 11 (Paul D. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
He was Deputy Leader of the Science Team for the Department of Defense Clementine mission to the Moon in
1994 and is the Principal Investigator of an imaging radar experiment on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission,
launched to the Moon in October, 2008. In 2004, he was a member of the President’s Commission on the
Implementation of U. S. Space Exploration Policy and was presented with the NASA Distinguished Public
Service Medal for that work. He is the recipient of the 2006 Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics, awarded
by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific
papers and four books, including The Once and Future Moon, and (with Ben Bussey) The Clementine Atlas of
the Moon.“Using the resources of the Moon to create a permanent, cislunar space faring system”
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Bibliography/p/102.pdf, Donnie)
Establishing a permanent foothold on the Moon opens the space frontier to many parties for many different
purposes. By creating a reusable, extensible cislunar space faring system, we build a “transcontinental railroad”
in space, connecting two worlds (Earth and Moon), as well as enabling access to all points in between. We will
have a system that can access the entire Moon, but more importantly, we will have the capability to
routinely access all of our space assets within cislunar space 16 : communications, GPS, weather,
remote sensing and strategic monitoring satellites. These satellites will then be in reach to be serviced,
maintained and replaced as they age.
Independently, the plan results in spin off tech that reduces costs AND solves debris
Spudis 11 (Paul D. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
He was Deputy Leader of the Science Team for the Department of Defense Clementine mission to the Moon in
1994 and is the Principal Investigator of an imaging radar experiment on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission,
launched to the Moon in October, 2008. In 2004, he was a member of the President’s Commission on the
Implementation of U. S. Space Exploration Policy and was presented with the NASA Distinguished Public
Service Medal for that work. He is the recipient of the 2006 Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics, awarded
by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific
papers and four books, including The Once and Future Moon, and (with Ben Bussey) The Clementine Atlas of
the Moon. “The Moon: Point of Entry to Cislunar Space” http://www.ndu.edu/press/space-Ch12.html, Donnie)
The prevailing rules of spaceflight have led to the development of a template of operations for satellites and
other space assets. For a given mission, a specialized, usually custom, spacecraft is designed. The spacecraft is
built to exceedingly fine standards, with numerous environmental tests and retests. It is launched on an
expendable vehicle into a specially designed orbit and in most cases is unreachable by other spacecraft. If all
goes well, it is operated for as long as possible and ultimately abandoned. The entire process is then repeated.
Sometimes, by incorporating the results from previous missions, the design is improved. Because each satellite
is eventually thrown away, space operations are expensive and difficult. If it were possible, these assets would
benefit greatly from servicing, maintenance, and expansion. A system that routinely accesses orbiting satellites
with servicing robots and people would fundamentally change our approach to spaceflight. The difficulty in
developing this capability is that the machines and propellant we would need to do this must also be lifted up
from the deep gravity well, again at great cost and difficulty. The greatest mass of this system is rocket
propellant. If we develop a source of rocket propellant in space (so that we do not have to lift it up from Earth’s
surface), a new type of operational template might be possible. Instead of one-off designs and throwaway
assets, we would think about long-term, extensible, and maintainable modular systems. The availability of a
source of rocket propellant in LEO would completely change the way engineers design spacecraft and the way
companies and the government think about investing in space assets. It would serve to dramatically reduce
the cost of infrastructure in space to both government and the private sector, thus spurring economic
investment (and profit).
Spudis 1 (Paul D. Spudis is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. He
was Deputy Leader of the Science Team for the Department of Defense Clementine mission to the Moon in
1994 and is the Principal Investigator of an imaging radar experiment on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission,
launched to the Moon in October, 2008. In 2004, he was a member of the President’s Commission on the
Implementation of U. S. Space Exploration Policy and was presented with the NASA Distinguished Public
Service Medal for that work. He is the recipient of the 2006 Von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics, awarded
by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific
papers and four books, including The Once and Future Moon, and (with Ben Bussey) The Clementine Atlas of
the Moon. “THE CASE FOR RENEWED HUMAN EXPLORATION OF THE MOON”
http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Bibliography/p/71.pdf, Donnie)
By developing the infrastructure for operations on the Moon, we obtain routine human access to GEO, or
geosynchronous orbit, the 23,000 mile high zone where all Earth’s communication satellites orbit. Why is this
important? The next generation of comsats will be enormously heavy, complex machines, requiring
megawatts of power and maintenance by people. Such satellites will be needed as demand for
bandwidth, the prime commodity of the 21st century information society, increases exponentially . The
ice deposits on the Moon will provide propellant to help support the Earth-Moon transportation infrastructure.
Using lunar propellant, we can access GEO with machine and human capability to build, service, and operate
the comsats of the new century. Such capability would be worth literally trillions of dollars
A strong comsat industry is key to the economy
Hitchens 1 (Theresa Hitchens is senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information. “Rushing to Weaponize
the Final Frontier” http://www.armscontrol.org/print/909 //Donnie)
The health of the U.S. commercial space and telecommunications industry is not an unimportant question to
national security writ large. The information technology revolution enabled by space-based communications,
and the Internet, are critical to the U.S. economy. This requires hard decisions to be made between
traditional national security needs and those of industry. For example, the wireless communications industry
already is in a spat with the Defense Department about access to a portion of the radio spectrum that industry
argues is essential to allow high-speed Internet access over cellular phones. That portion of the spectrum (17551850 megahertz) is now denied to U.S. commercial users because it is the spectrum band of choice for military
(and other government) communications, as well as precision targeting. At the same time, the disputed
spectrum band is being used by many other countries for commercial wireless communications, raising the
possibility that a continued U.S. policy of denial, although perhaps making near-term military sense, will
inhibit the ability of U.S. firms to compete abroad. Despite the likelihood that such disagreements will
multiply as the information revolution continues to pick up speed, the health of the U.S. commercial space and
telecommunications industry is also important to the Pentagon itself. The Department of Defense now uses
commercial satellite systems to cover about 60 percent of its satellite communications needs, and that
dependence is growing.6 This trend toward increased military use of commercial assets is unlikely to be
reversed anytime soon, in part due to the high costs of building and operating military-dedicated satellites.
Thus, there are and will remain significant benefits to the military of an open space and telecommunications
market in which U.S. companies are major players. That fact must be weighed into any consideration of
whether the weaponization of space—whether through the deployment of weapons in space or through a policy
of aggressive targeting of satellites—makes good policy.
They contribute billions
DalBello 3 (Richard DalBello is Vice President for Government Relations at Intelsat “Commercial
Communication Satellites: Assessing Vulnerability in a Changing World”
http://www.gwu.edu/~spi/assets/docs/Security_Space_Volume.Final.pdf //Donnie)
Commercial communication satellites play an important and growing role in the US domestic and global
economies. Every day, billions of data, credit, and banking transactions take place using satellites. Very Small
Aperture Terminal (VSAT) services deliver data and information to small and large businesses in places as
remote as an African village and as developed as New York City. VSATs provide thousands of companies with
private, secure corporate communications for a broad array of purposes including inventory management,
point of sale data collection, credit card validation, and e-mail delivery. They also provide a decentralized
telecommunications network for document storage for a variety of financial institutions and global trading
operations. Satellites provide the backbone for TV, radio, and print media distribution. All major news
organizations throughout the world use satellites to gather the news and satellites play a role in almost all
television entertainment distribution. Roughly 80 million people subscribe to Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS)
for their television programming worldwide and many more receive cable broadcasts that originated on
satellites. Finally, satellites are the primary source for weather forecasting and prediction as well as disaster
relief and recovery operations. Despite the well-publicized financial problems of some segments of the satellite
industry in the late 1990s and some high-profile consolidations, the satellite industry continues to grow. In the
midst of one of the most significant telecommunications market corrections ever experienced, satellite related
revenues have done reasonably well. Total revenues from all sources grew in 2002 to over $86 billion.
Growth in the satellite services sector is being driven by consumer-oriented video services with the
introduction of modest, but important, growth in the provision of internet and satellite radio services.
Traditional transponder leasing revenues have declined in recent years as a result of the overall downturn in
telecom spending. (See Figure 2) As a result of recent global events, demand from the military and news media
has helped to reenergize the satellite marketplace. The satellite manufacturing and launch service sectors
experienced the slowest growth in the early 2000s but are now showing signs of recovery as the overall
economy improves and the demand for replacement satellites increases.
Global nuclear war
Harris and Burrows 09 PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence
Council (NIC) & member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit
Mathew, and Jennifer “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial
Crisis” http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf
Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting and
interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended consequences,
there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history
may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great
Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling
democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral
institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the
twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which the potential
for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would
be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even
as resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the
Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of
technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in
2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and
training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become selfradicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic
downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence
would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed
Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire
additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent
relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of
low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader
conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals
combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in
achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short
warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than
defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources,
could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices.
Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case,
this
could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example,
to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important
geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s
development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of the
most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to increased
tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical
sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water
resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.
-GPS good
Key to nuclear primacy and ag
Dinerman 11 (“LightSquared's GPS Request Jeopardizes National Security” http://www.hudsonny.org/2459/lightsquared-gps-national-security //Donnie)
Since it came into use in 1990, the US Air Force's GPS system has excited admiration and envy throughout the world. Former President Chirac of France
complained that it was making the Europeans into "Technological vassals of the Americans." Keeping the system healthy and safe has
been a major policy priority of the George H. W. Bush, Clinton and George W, Bush administrations. The
Obama administration's own National Space Policy, published in June 2010, says that "The United States must
maintain its leadership in the service, provision and the use of global navigation satellite systems [GPSs].
Although it is not often mentioned, the GPS is also an essential part of out nuclear deterrent. The guidance
system on missiles, bombers and submarines all use the GPS, as well as its backup systems, to maintain the
capacity for precision targeting of US nuclear warheads . It is no wonder that the opponents of global
civilization, and of America in particular, have sought ways to jam, or knock out the system. The North Koreans recently
launched a major jamming attack on the GPS signal that interfered with the system's operation to the extent
that a US intelligence-gathering aircraft was forced to land with its mission uncompleted. In 1991, US Air Force officers
were happy to explain that Saddam's attempt to transmit a jamming signal against the GP S system failed. The USAF simply destroyed the transmitter
using a GPS guided bomb. In 2004 the US government forced the European Union to agree to change its plans to transmit a radio frequency signal that
would have endangered the smooth operation of one of the GPS signals from its Galileo satellite navigation system. The uneven history of the
development of the Galileo system, and the failure of the Europeans to find a workable "commercial" model for its development, is a sign of just how
expensive and difficult it is to make a system like GPS work reliably and safely. The frequencies used to transmit the GPS signals are assigned to the US
government by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) based in Geneva, Switzerland. The main frequencies, and others nearby on the
electromagnetic spectrum whose use can interfere with the GPS signal, are highly coveted by America's rivals, such as the European Union and China.
Keeping US control of these frequencies is a constant political struggle. America's diplomats have so far been successful, thanks in large part to the
internationally recognized reliability and utility of the GPS system. As this scandal unfolds, the ITU and those who seek to break America's hold on the
GPS signal frequencies will be watching carefully. If they see that the White House was prepared to endanger the integrity and reliability of the GPS
signal to satisfy a campaign contributor, the effects could be disastrous. The next time a nation or group of nations try and convince the ITU to allow
them to transmit signals that may harm the effectiveness of the GPS signal, the international bureaucrats in Geneva may decide to go along with the
request. After all, they might reason, if the US President doesn't care to protect the safety and integrity of the GPS signals, why should they? The GPS
system consists of a constellation of 31 satellites and two ground control stations,with the main one in Colorado and a back-up one in Maryland. Each
satellite contains a highly accurate atomic clock and a set of transmitters. The satellites send a set of signals down to Earth where receivers measure the
difference in the timing of the reception of each signal, known as the "Time Offset." As the Air Force "Space Primer says, " Based on the time offset, the
distance between the satellite and the receiver can be determined. This process is followed for at least four satellites. The cumulative information is
entered into the position equations and calculated." The receiver then shows where the receiver is on Earth, helps one to navigate and also gives us access
to an amazingly accurate time measuring device. The GPS has made possible, fror example, an agricultural revolution called
"Precision Farming," whereby farmers, by combining their knowledge of their fields' geology and the GPS
signal, have been able to reduce radically the amounts of fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides they need to grow
their crops. Other uses include banking, and of course the GPS receivers that the public uses for everything from hiking to getting to the grocery
store. America's GPS has gone from being considered an expensive military luxury in the 1980s, to being a war-winning technology in the 1991 Gulf War,
and now to being an essential part of 21st century civilized life
Global nuclear war
Caves 10 (John P, Senior Research Fellow in the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the
National Defense University, January, Strategic Forum, No. 252, “Avoiding a Crisis of Confidence in the U.S.
Nuclear Deterrent”)
Perceptions of a compromised U.S. nuclear deterrent as described above would have profound policy
implications, particularly if they emerge at a time when a nuclear-armed great power is pursuing a more
aggressive strategy toward U.S. allies and partners in its region in a bid to enhance its regional and global clout.
A dangerous period of vulnerability would open for the United States and those nations that depend on U.S.
protection while the United States attempted to rectify the problems with its nuclear forces. As it would take
more than a decade for the United States to produce new nuclear weapons, ensuing events could preclude a
return to anything like the status quo ante. The assertive, nuclear-armed great power, and other major
adversaries, could be willing to challenge U.S. interests more directly in the expectation that the United States
would be less prepared to threaten or deliver a military response that could lead to direct conflict. They will
want to keep the United States from reclaiming its earlier power position. Allies and partners who have relied
upon explicit or implicit assurances of U.S. nuclear protection as a foundation of their security could lose faith
in those assurances. They could compensate by accommodating U.S. rivals, especially in the short term, or
acquiring their own nuclear deterrents, which in most cases could be accomplished only over the mid- to long
term. A more nuclear world would likely ensue over a period of years. Important U.S. interests could be
compromised or abandoned, or a major war could occur as adversaries and/or the United States miscalculate
new boundaries of deterrence and provocation. At worst, war could lead to state-on-state employment of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on a scale far more catastrophic than what nuclear-armed terrorists alone
could inflict.
Ag is key to solve global war and extinction
Lugar 2k (Richard, a US Senator from Indiana, is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a
member and former chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “calls for a new green revolution to combat
global warming and reduce world instability,” pg online @
http://www.unep.org/OurPlanet/imgversn/143/lugar.html Donnie)
In a world confronted by global terrorism, turmoil in the Middle East, burgeoning nuclear threats and other
crises, it is easy to lose sight of the long-range challenges. But we do so at our peril. One of the most daunting of
them is meeting the world’s need for food and energy in this century. At stake is not only preventing starvation
and saving the environment, but also world peace and security. History tells us that states may go to war over
access to resources, and that poverty and famine have often bred fanaticism and terrorism. Working to feed the
world will minimize factors that contribute to global instability and the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. With the world population expected to grow from 6 billion people today to 9 billion by midcentury, the demand for affordable food will increase well beyond current international production levels.
People in rapidly developing nations will have the means greatly to improve their standard of living and caloric
intake. Inevitably, that means eating more meat. This will raise demand for feed grain at the same time that the
growing world population will need vastly more basic food to eat. Complicating a solution to this problem is a
dynamic that must be better understood in the West: developing countries often use limited arable land to
expand cities to house their growing populations. As good land disappears, people destroy timber resources
and even rainforests as they try to create more arable land to feed themselves. The long-term environmental
consequences could be disastrous for the entire globe. To meet the expected demand for food over the next 50
years, we in the United States will have to grow roughly three times more food on the land we have. That’s a tall
order. My farm in Marion County, Indiana, for example, yields on average 8.3 to 8.6 tonnes of corn per hectare
– typical for a farm in central Indiana. To triple our production by 2050, we will have to produce an annual
average of 25 tonnes per hectare. Can we possibly boost output that much? Well, it’s been done before.
Advances in the use of fertilizer and water, improved machinery and better tilling techniques combined to
generate a threefold increase in yields since 1935 – on our farm back then, my dad produced 2.8 to 3 tonnes per
hectare. Much US agriculture has seen similar increases. But of course there is no guarantee that we can
achieve those results again. Given the urgency of expanding food production to meet world demand, we must
invest much more in scientific research and target that money toward projects that promise to have significant
national and global impact. For the United States, that will mean a major shift in the way we conduct and fund
agricultural science. Fundamental research will generate the innovations that will be necessary to feed the
world. The United States can take a leading position in a productivity revolution. And our success at increasing
food production may play a decisive humanitarian role in the survival of billions of people and the health of our
planet.
-SBIRS good
Nuclear war—the plan is key
Thompson 11 (Loren Thompson is chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute. “New Satellite Provides
‘Just-in-time’ Deterrence” http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/110613-sat-just-in-timedeterrence.html, Donnie)
It was a big relief to U.S. defense officials in May when the first geosynchronous satellite in the Space Based
Infrared System (SBIRS) successfully reached orbit. The new spacecraft is equipped with sensors that will
provide the first indication of hostile missile launches, nuclear explosions and other heat-generating events
around the globe relevant to national security. Such information is essential to nuclear deterrence, which
as currently practiced requires the nation’s strategic arsenal to be capable of surviving an attack and then
retaliating in a controlled and proportionate manner. If news of enemy missile launches is not received
quickly, the ability of U.S. forces to respond effectively might be so uncertain as to impair the entire
structure of deterrence. There isn’t much doubt that the SBIRS constellation will be a big improvement
over existing Defense Support Program satellites. Each of the four geosynchronous satellites positioned about
36,000 kilometers above the equator will carry a scanning sensor with three times the sensitivity and twice the
revisit rate of legacy sensors, plus a staring sensor that can provide persistent, higher-resolution coverage of
specific areas (like Iran or North Korea). The sensitivity and timeliness of information generated by the
new satellites will also enable the SBIRS constellation to provide valuable reconnaissance for the nation’s
ballistic missile defense system, conventional warfighters and intelligence analysts. But the core mission, the
one that matters most, is assuring sufficient warning of hostile missile launches so that the nation’s nuclear
arsenal can credibly deter aggression. What many observers don’t grasp is how tenuous the existing missile
warning system has become. The first and most vital line of defense in that system since 1970 has been the
legacy satellites that SBIRS will replace. Prime contractor Northrop Grumman has introduced numerous
upgrades to the Defense Support Program satellites that have improved their reliability, sensitivity and
survivability. However, a review of the program’s launch history indicates that the Air Force has managed to
successfully launch only one of the satellites in the last 10 years — which is very worrisome when you consider
that the nominal design life for the latest versions of Defense Support Program satellites is only five years.
Fortunately, the satellites typically exceed their design life by 250 percent, and some have lasted even longer.
But there’s a reason engineers specify conservative design lives, so the fact that the last successful launch of a
legacy satellite occurred in 2004 means that America’s missile warning network is living on borrowed time.
Under the original SBIRS development plan, there was little danger of a gap in missile warning. The new
spacecraft were supposed to begin reaching orbit in 2002, providing plenty of time to transition from the
legacy constellation to the new one. But a variety of hardware and software problems delayed the program by
many years, and then in 2008 the last (and most recently launched) Defense Support Program spacecraft
mysteriously failed in orbit. It was the unforeseen combination of SBIRS delays and a legacy satellite failure
that got policymakers scrambling to identify options for filling a potential gap in missile warning. What they
learned to their dismay is that there weren’t any viable alternatives to stretching out the performance of the
Defense Support Program and straining to get SBIRS into orbit as soon as possible. There are a number of
possibilities for squeezing more life out of the Defense Support Program satellites, from reducing the fuel
margins required for boosting them into retirement orbits to working around the failure of specific components
in an architecture designed for redundancy. But at this point some of the satellites in use must be “single
string” spacecraft, meaning there are no backups for key functions, because the most recent Defense Support
Program satellites still believed to be functioning were launched in 2000, 2001 and 2004. That’s a long time to
be operating continuously in space without any repairs. The launch of SBIRS sensors on two National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellites in highly elliptical polar orbits beginning in 2006 has somewhat
diminished the danger while bolstering confidence in the sensors to be carried on the more capable
geosynchronous birds. But the sensors hosted by NRO can’t provide the coverage afforded by near-circular
equatorial orbits at geosynchronous distances, so there’s no alternative to fielding the full SBIRS architecture.
Policymakers appear to believe that the legacy constellation will be viable through 2013, after which SBIRS will
have to assume most of the missile warning mission. Thus, a lot is riding on the success of the GEO-1 satellite
that reached orbit in May. With solar panels and antennas deployed, operators are testing the twin sensors and
other on-board equipment to make sure they meet performance specifications. SBIRS has been an
uncommonly controversial program that began during a period of turmoil in space acquisition and was saddled
with more requirements than any satellite should have to meet (three times too many, the Defense Science
Board said in 2003). But the most capable part of the system has now reached orbit with all of its “key
performance parameters” intact, which is a major achievement for prime contractor Lockheed Martin and
payload integrator Northrop Grumman. It is also a big victory for the U.S. Air Force, which stuck with the
SBIRS architecture despite years of criticism. Its leaders understood the urgency of replacing legacy missile
warning satellites before they failed. However, it will still be some time before the constellation is fully
deployed, so the danger has not passed. The bottom line on nuclear deterrence is that it isn’t likely to work
unless U.S. leaders have reliable information about what other nuclear powers are doing, and right now
SBIRS is the only solution that can meet that need in a timely fashion.
-disease impact
Satellites solve epidemics.
Ford et. al 11 (Timothy E. Ford, Rita R. Colwell, Joan B. Rose, Stephen S. Morse, David J. Rogers, and Terry L. Yates, University of New England,
Biddeford, Maine, USA (T.E. Ford); University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA (R.R. Colwell); Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of
Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA (R.R. Colwell); Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA (J.B. Rose); Columbia University
Mailman School of Public Health, New York, New York, USA (S.S. Morse); Oxford University, Oxford, UK (D.J. Rogers); and University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA (T.L. Yates), “Satellite Imagery in Predicting Infectious Disease Outbreaks”, January 12, Emerging Infectious Diseases
Journal, http://www.eoearth.org/article/Satellite_Imagery_in_Predicting_Infectious_Disease_Outbreaks?topic=49538)
The scientific community has a relative consensus that epidemic and pandemic disease risks will be
exacerbated by environmental changes that destabilize weather patterns, change distribution of vectors, and
increase transport and transmission risk. Predictive modeling may lead to improved understanding and
potentially prevent future epidemic and pandemic disease. Many respiratory infections are well known as highly climate dependent or
seasonal. Although we are not yet able to predict their incidence with great precision, we may well be able to do this in the future. Meningococcal
meningitis (caused by Neisseria meningitidis) in Africa is probably the best known example. In the disease-endemic so-called meningitis belt (an area
running across sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal to Ethiopia), this is classically a dry season disease, which ceases with the beginning of the rainy season,
likely as a result of changes in host susceptibility (19). Many other infectious diseases show strong seasonality or association
with climatic conditions (20). Perhaps one of the most interesting is influenza, which is thought of as a wintertime disease in temperate climates
but shows both winter and summer peaks in subtropical and tropical regions (21). Although the reasons for seasonality are often poorly understood, the
close dependence of such diseases on climatic conditions suggests that these, too, are likely to be amenable to
prediction by modeling and remote sensing (22). When we consider influenza, it is hard not to think about the future
risks from pandemic influenza. Public health agencies in the United States and around the world are focusing on influenza preparedness,
notably concerning influenza virus A subtype H5N1, which has captured attention because it causes severe disease and death in humans but as yet has
demonstrated only very limited and inefficient human-to-human transmission. The severity of the disease raises images of the 1918
influenza epidemic on an unimaginably vast scale if the virus were to adapt to more efficient human-to-human
transmission. Can predictive modeling using satellite or other imaging of environmental variables help in
prediction of future influenza pandemics? Xiangming Xiao at the University of New Hampshire was funded in 2006 by the National
Institutes for Health to lead a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional team to use remote satellite imaging to track avian flu. Xiao et al. have
used satellite image–derived vegetation indices to map paddy rice agriculture in southern Asia (23). They believe that
a similar approach can be used in conjunction with the more traditional approach of analyzing bird migration
patterns and poultry production (24,25) to map potential hot spots of virus transmission (26).
Disease causes extinction
Yu 9—Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science (Victoria, Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our
Fate, 22 May 2009, http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate)
A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the
best-known case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th
century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral
strains are constantly emerging — a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated human
extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that
scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIV’s rapid and constant
evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the virus’s abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIV’s use of
reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction
mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a
poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years without
manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune
system. However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains could
prove far more consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new
strains) and antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new
version of influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly,
this lag time could potentially lead to a “global influenza pandemic,” according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill
over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps
even more frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the original viral strain —
which could only infect birds — into a human-viable strain (10).
Evans 10 (Jane Evans Department of Military Strategic Studies, writing for global security studies “Pandemics
and National Security” http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Evans%20PANDEMICS.pdf, Donnie)
Recent developments in medicine, hygiene, and public health have virtually eliminated widespread disease
from industrialized countries like the U.S., making pandemics of new or emerging diseases the salient national
security issue. A pandemic is an epidemic spread over a wide geographical area and affecting many people, and
while a pandemic does not threaten the survival of humanity, it challenges the prosperity and stability of
political institutions and human society. Andrew Price-Smith argues that “rapid worldwide changes may
accelerate the diffusion, the lethality, and the resistance of the plethora of species within the microbial world”
(5). For instance, changes in agricultural practices have created new ecological niches for disease – vast bovine,
avian, and swine farms, in huge numbers and often in close proximity that can facilitate cross-species
infection. Transportation of persons, animals, and food products around the world also presents a serious
problem. New pathogens are emerging at an increasingly accelerated rate; “Alteration in the processing of
cattle feed in the U.K. resulted in extended host range and emergence of [mad cow disease]… New
opportunities can be created by climatic changes such as global warming and ecologic alterations facilitated
through changed land use and movements of infected hosts, susceptible animals, or disease vectors” (Cutler 2).
A disease can change in several important ways: it can jump to a new species (swine to human), change
transmission method (blood-borne to aerosol dispersion), become more lethal, or become drug-resistant
(Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – MRSA). Emerging diseases or those thought to be wiped out are
becoming more of an issue with globalization and changing societal practices. There are many ways diseases
can threaten national security. First, they cause increased rates of morbidity and mortality – people sicken and
die, putting huge strains on public health and the nation’s workforce, leading to political instability, class strife,
and economic volatility. For example, AIDS has led to numerous problems in many African countries. When
marginalized or poor people cannot afford treatment and the government cannot or will not provide it, faith in
the political system crumbles; class and ethnic conflict emerges and without a sufficient working class, GDP
decreases and each problem begets more problems. Second, in the article “Epidemic Disease and National
Security,” author Susan Peterson argues that the most direct threat posed by a disease to the United States
arises from its vulnerability to biological weapons attack (45). It is important to note that the result of a
naturally spreading disease and something like bioterrorism is one and the same. Failure to prevent a
biological weapons attack results in the same outcome – infection of the population – and requires the same
solution. Preparation for widespread disease should therefore be a key focus of national security. More indirect
threats to national security include “the health of the armed forces and, most significantly, to the social,
economic, and political stability of certain key regions – especially Russia – that also challenge American
security” (Peterson 46). In this sense, diseases lower the ability of the State Department or the Department of
Defense to adequately provide international security to the United States. Both internal and external national
security is threatened by the spread of disease. In October 2009, the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC organized
a conference that addressed many of the issues pertaining to the threat of biological weapons attacks. The
Director of the Center referenced a recent National Intelligence Estimate that identified bioterrorism as the
intelligence community’s most important WMD concern, because “the knowledge, equipment, and pathogens
required to construct a biological weapon are now globally dispersed, and there is no single technological
methodology chokepoint or process that can be regulated to prevent the development of biological weapons”
(Gronvall 433). For many of the reasons listed so far in this paper, the outcome of a biological attack is
particularly worrisome, necessitating a closer examination of malicious bio-threats. Unlike nuclear
technologies, biological materials and information are easy to obtain, and the nature of biosciences is such that
equipment, expertise, and infrastructure in the field supports an important function to society and cannot, nor
should it, be limited. Any attempt to prevent the development of biological weapons would also limit much
needed medical advancements. The CDC defines a bioterrorism attack as “the deliberate release of viruses,
bacteria, or other germs (agents) used to cause illness or death in people, animals, or plants”
(CDC/Bioterrorism). These agents have a high potential for abuse by terrorist groups for several reasons. First,
a disease can be difficult to detect due to the incubation period between when an individual is infected and
when symptoms begin to show. Second, the dispersion capability of some diseases allows a wider range of
influence than an explosive device. Third, one bioweapon can have a multiplicative effect – although only 100
people are initially infected, with a disease like smallpox, each person can then infect multiple other people,
who in turn pass it on to even more. Outside the anthrax attacks of 2001, the U.S. has yet to experience a
serious confirmed bioterrorist attack. However, this does not mean the threat should be minimized until an
incident such as 9/11 acts as the catalyst; biological weapons are a direct threat to national security. Of the
more indirect threats to U.S. national security, there are three mechanisms through which infectious diseases
cause instability within a foreign nation of the outbreak of military conflict. Peterson describes these as the
balance of power among adversaries, health and human rights policy conflicts, and domestic instability (55).
The first and most obvious mechanism involves one side of a dispute or conflict disproportionately suffering
from a disease, leading to an imbalance of power and a possible preemptive attack. If a nation’s military
capabilities are strongly affected by AIDS, this can present a vulnerable weakness. However, as with all three
causal mechanisms, this type of situation will generally only occur when a pandemic is particularly severe or
when the involved nations are unstable to begin with; this can be seen in warring African states with high
HIV/AIDS incidence rates. The second mechanism concerns policies in response to an outbreak. For example,
a nation may restrict freedom of movement and goods, or impose involuntary quarantine of infected
individuals. While these policies likely will not cause conflict, they can lead to social and economic volatility if
the practices persist. The third and most important mechanism is domestic instability. Consider AIDS, which
largely affects people in their most economically productive years, and leads to the destruction of a country’s
workforce, diminished productivity, and a dwindling professional and middle class (Peterson 59).
Furthermore, the AIDS crisis is leaving behind a generation of orphans which the CIA says are “unable to cope
and vulnerable to exploitation and radicalization,” as seen by the violence of alienated youths in Zimbabwe
(Peterson 61). All of the examples above are representative of a critical pattern; as Price-Smith writes,
“infectious disease may in fact contribute to societal destabilization and to chronic low-intensity intrastate
violence, and in extreme cases it may accelerate the processes that lead to state failure” (121). The U.S. should
be concerned on the level of national security, because it has been demonstrated repeatedly that failed states
foster terrorism, regional instability, and often necessitate foreign aid and humanitarian assistance.
Plan ideas
The United States federal government should substantially increase cislunar space
development.